City Council Joint Meeting with Police Civilian Oversight Board (PCOB)   9/11/2025

Remi, is my audio coming through?

Yes, we hear you.

I am the acting chair of the board.

Sam is on his way, so if you wait a few minutes.

Thank you.

Y'all start your meetings on time, all right?

I apologize for not being there in person.

Hey, James, how you doing, sir?

No?

Are we good to go, Mr. Mayor?

I think we're ready to go.

I can't see clearly the whole room from here.

OK.

Welcome, Deputy Manager.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you.

Mayor Wade?

Here.

Councilor Payne?

Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

Second.

Not possible to do, okay.

and I'm not sure if council wants to take any action with those items at this point.

Oh, I'm sorry.

That's PCOV agenda I was referring to.

Okay, if not we'll get into the presentation discussion of staff recommendation, recommended ordinance revision and are you taking lead on this or?

Yeah, I'm just going to make a comment.

Okay.

But I'm going to stop there, and I'll turn it over to James.

These focus on some specific items, so I'm hoping that the screen will move away.

And you also have it in front of you.

and that way I can maybe answer those or if you see any details that we want to look into.

I thought that the whole city is like audited, I don't know, annually, you know.

Everybody plays in that space, yes.

That's an example.

It didn't allow for that and I think that that flexibility will be helpful and may actually uncover some additional policy items that your police civilian oversight board may want to take a look at that would not have been brought up before because there was no complaint attached to it.

Other clarification questions on this part so far?

and the single executive director within the entire city of Charlottesville has never made sense so being able to just clean that up and make it parallel to others we did a whole job description project and we had to keep that job separate because the ordinance states it that way so those are two basic cleanup things and again not attempting to take away anything but just to go ahead and put those positions and that office in parallel to all the others that exist today.

Is this meeting and this being on the agenda the first time the PCOB members have seen these revisions?

That's the first time that they have been put together in this format.

Okay, thank you.

Miss Gonzalez did that a few times as well.

So it was familiar to me and then we distributed to the current members of the board.

Michael, did you have anything?

So those are examples and the goal in this language was to make it clear that those activities should be connected to the board, should be brought back to the board and reported out to the board and that they can also direct those activities but that the director is engaging in them independently.

So that would come under this as well, would it not, Mr. Walker?

And that is also where the operating procedures say a lot of things about how that process is meant to work.

And that was something we felt would address that issue, hopefully, so that retention of board members would improve.

I do want to pause on this one just in case there's any questions because it is the larger section before we get into the rest.

Just to clarify, up there it says page one, but in here is this the part from page six that's being moved to page one?

I apologize.

I'm just trying to make sure I'm reading the right part.

As I see, we go from 2-451 to 2-453 and it says see presentation details for 2-452 and I don't know what that means.

It establishes the commission and then it establishes the office and director as the very next item.

So where it has section 2.455 executive director struck out, everything below that on page 6 is going to be the new 2-452?

Correct.

And it says AB and D3 added, but I only see D1 and D2.

And these two slides are the only new language that would exist, being added in.

Oh, OK.

So this is 452A, 452B, and then D3.

So what is on page 6 of the slides is the new 452D3?

Correct.

Is there a close to the quotation so that basically everything following the word stating is the new language?

There is a quote missing there.

Thanks.

I tried other ways that didn't make as much sense.

I think a clean copy at some point would be nice too.

Great, thanks.

It never said anything about the director prior, so I added the director in there.

It just said each member shall.

And I can pause there for a quick second before I move on if there's anything.

Back when there was a conversation about the department sharing information with the board, does this affect that?

And so that was just trying to clear that up and make it clear that the office facilitates that process.

Okay, I just didn't want that to mean that there's no longer copies available.

And the SOP that goes with this also clarifies that specifically.

As serving the original records, comma shall be responsible.

Just for clarification, who is the council for BCR?

At the moment.

We have none because of the conflict with using the city attorney's office should there be an issue between the board and the city we've been that's that ish that position is currently vacant

We can advise on day-to-day matters, just more than we really don't think is going to be the case, or any kind of conflict between the department and the board, or we wouldn't need this or get outside counsel.

We just hadn't gotten there yet.

Maybe there was one of interest, but.

I don't know if any counselors, you know, have questions about that, but that's why we are without counsel and have been for some time.

So there's multiple restrictions to getting independent legal counsel.

They don't have any more access to those names than we might and it was just creating for them extra work that was not proving fruitful.

I've dealt with a similar kind of system before, an attorney recommending creating a list for the, to be chosen by an independent board, so we can.

We would welcome that and appreciate that very much, Deputy Manager.

Is that not?

Yes, it does.

They have an attorney when they're ready.

a kind of like minimum we should set where it's like council funding will not drop below X number of dollars or like something so that a future council couldn't go we're gonna take away all the money for the PCOB so they can't fight back or something like that I mean I guess future council could change this anyway

Your ability to bind and ensure council action is limited.

We're going to have the same power that you have right now.

In selecting that list, that would be the driving.

How often does that list get reviewed and updated, and is that a concern, that by the time board action is needed, everyone's retired?

It doesn't necessarily have to be spelled out in the ordinance.

I would also add, go ahead.

RWSA does the same thing where they redid the contract every few years.

a future city manager because this one will support whatever needs to be done but a future city manager refusing they can always make counsel aware of that and then it could be addressed in that manner as well.

Thank you.

They produce a lot of content and it is the belief that this office can present that content to them effectively.

So is it how and what's your name sir?

Andrew.

Yeah, I can speak to the training that was held in this room, especially if it seems appropriate.

Yeah, that's the eight hour one I was referring to.

And so that's kind of my point there and I think eight hours is very, I think it may have actually shaken a little bit of the PCOB up a great deal to have had that happen, had the people who showed up, show up and the people who didn't, didn't and I think that's in itself a reason enough to kind of warrant it.

So I'm just curious, is this like, do we have to pay for someone to come here and do it?

And so if that 90-day requirement kicks in every time there's a new appointment, we are contracting additional training each time at a cost.

In order for PCOV to be, I'm not thinking original, but to be authentic or certified, it has to go through this organization to get the training?

Only because the ordinance states that.

some additional changes that they may want to bring forth and it will allow your staff that capability to do some of the basic training and I'm hopefully going to save you a little bit.

You know, we don't have to get, at least I don't think we have to get done in detail as long as we give y'all some flexibility to do, to make changes.

And so this would mean that if like a bunch of people joined at once maybe we do hire the person to have a permit and then it gets scattered throughout the year then.

And so that's something I intend to do.

So it gives also flexibility for your seasoned board members to maybe just have that conversation that you found valuable versus sitting through the formalized training again.

I know it may not have been the best way to present it, but it was the best way that we were able to come up with in a short amount of time.

I'll have to say it was much less painful than I expected.

Sure.

It doesn't specifically allow or deny.

It does not.

Right.

But we could add something to this ordinance right now.

So it adds something to its duties to make it a function that makes it advisory to the council, which would bring it under the purview of the Virginia statutes that allows for compensation to advisory boards.

I don't know when we have that conversation, is that a budget time conversation?

Ashley I look to you and say if we remember we might have done some analysis at some point and a number, a dollar amount?

It would require the change to being a certain type of board first and then additional information because of those barriers we never looked at dollar figures or comparators because that was kind of a hard stop for your staff.

But that's just a matter of figuring that out and bringing that forward for further consideration.

We probably should have a guiding principle.

But figuring out, I mean, and he doesn't have to figure out much, he knows all the language, but the determining what the right language is and then it just gets repeated in whichever bodies you want to elevate to that status to make that possible.

Yeah, seems like it.

But from their legal enabling way, I think there's a way I can hold my mouth and make it happen.

Thank you.

So anything council could do to accelerate that process would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Brian and then Lloyd.

But if our desire for the perfect is getting in the way of actually getting some work done, I think that that's a problem.

So I'm not saying we shouldn't meet those requirements, but we need to be realistic about the challenges that we put in the way of folks to fill those positions.

If I may, I think the idea of not necessarily making an absolute requirement but indicating a preference for making that a favorable component of someone who applies to the board being selected, I think that makes a lot of sense to me.

I would like to see us entertain the payment before we make that change.

Change one variable at a time.

Cash for a babysitter for Uber or what have you.

That's not a kind of payment situation?

I mean I think that is a reasonable way to roll it forward and we just really take a hard close look at the bodies that you have and I believe there are 44 by my last count so you would need to prioritize and then I think we could get started.

Lloyd, and then I'll get you out.

We can check on that.

metrics would be for the board yet.

Michael, did you have anything, sir?

Sure, I have a few thoughts.

So we've got some really big things that we've got to change.

Other comments or questions before I open up the public hearing, I mean the public comment?

I agree that what we did or what is proposed here is rather limited in scope, but I think it's a logical and solid starting point.

Did you have anything, sir?

Okay, thank you.

Is there anything else you want to add?

Yes.

Yes for me.

Yeah, not necessarily a PCOB-specific request.

different levers to poll you know like if it's a per meeting is it a per year is it based on the frequency do we change the frequency of meetings do we change the number of people in the board like there's lots of variables yeah I mean one we don't have to create this I'm sure there are other communities that have already figured this stuff out we'll be able to spend some time doing that search as well but I just wanted to get indication of that and then I guess the summary go ahead I'm sorry Michael that's right I forgot about

I would also say in addition that we need to, City Council needs to look at the recommendations in the most recent annual report, all of them, as well as the recommendations in the comparison of Charlottesville PCOB and NACL's 13 principles for effective civilian oversight in addition to that.

So this is one of many meetings I would imagine that you'll be entertaining over however long it takes us to get through it.

We really, really appreciate it.

Second, all in favor please stand up.